TXPHS2025

Janelle Rios, PhD, MPH
Deputy Director, Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute
Director, P2R Consortium
Deputy Director, Center for Occupational Health and Exposome Studies

Janelle Rios, PhD, MPH, is a faculty associate at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health (SPH). Rios is the Deputy Director of the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute (TEPHI), an innovative state agency authorized by the Texas Legislature in 2021. She also serves as director and principal investigator of the Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (P2R) Consortium, a large multi-site, multi-program worker training program funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. Rios is also the principal investigator of the Just-in-time Elastomeric Respirator Training and Fit Testing (JET FIT) study, a research and training project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine the feasibility of using reusable elastomeric respirators in healthcare delivery settings in lieu of disposable N95 respirators. Rios is also the consortium principal investigator of the Deployment Safety Academy for Field Experiences (D-SAFE) training project funded by the U.S. Public Health Service.

Eric Boerwinkle, PhD
Dean, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health
Director, Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute

Eric Boerwinkle, PhD, is Dean and M. David Low Chair of Public Health at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, which has faculty and educational and research programs that span the state of Texas.

He joined the UTHealth faculty in 1986 and served as chair of the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Health at the School of Public Health from 2003-2015. He has also directed the Human Genetics Centers at both the School of Public Health and the Brown Foundation Institute for Molecular Medicine, within UTHealth.

Author of more than 1,200 scientific papers, Boerwinkle has led groundbreaking research on the connection between genome variation and the transition from health to disease. During COVID he led teams of analysts, clinicians and scientists answering COVID-related questions locally, in the Texas Medical Center, and across the state in collaboration with Texas DSHS. Boerwinkle is also the agency director of the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute (TEPHI), a state agency charged with preparing Texas for future infectious disease outbreaks.

Moderator: Susan Rollo, DVM, PhD, DACVPM
State Public Health Veterinarian, Texas Department of State Health Services

Susan Rollo, DVM, PhD, MS, serves as the state public health veterinarian at the Texas Department of State Health Services in the zoonosis control branch — a position she has held since 2021. Rollo worked as a state epidemiologist for the Texas Animal Health Commission from 2016–2021 and as a field epidemiologist from 2014–2016. She also worked for the Department of State Health Services as a zoonosis control veterinarian from 2010–2014.

Rollo began her public health career in 2002 as an epidemiologist for a four-county area in southeast Texas then returned to Texas A&M University to complete a doctorate in epidemiology. Rollo has been a diplomate in veterinary preventive medicine since 2007. Rollo's specialties include bridging her backgrounds in public health and agriculture to promote a robust one-health atmosphere. She continues to strive to ensure public health has a seat at the table when it comes to regulatory disease preparedness and response.

Sylvia Dee, PhD
Associate Professor, Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Rice University

Sylvia Dee, PhD, is an associate professor and climate scientist at Rice University specializing in climate change and the past, present, and future of Earth’s hydrological cycle. Dee completed her undergraduate degree in civil and environmental engineering with certificates in geological engineering and environmental sciences at Princeton University. She earned her PhD in geological and earth sciences from the University of Southern California. Dee previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and Brown University. She was named a National Academies of Science and Engineering Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellow in 2021 for her work on climate change impacts on the Gulf of Mexico.

Dee’s research focuses on how Earth’s modes of natural variability, like El Niño and La Niña events, compound with climate change to alter the characteristics of weather and climate extremes, such as flooding hazard on the Mississippi River. Her lab evaluates climate model data to understand future risks to human and natural systems.

She teaches courses in environment and society, introduction to climate change science, paleoclimate, and climate physics and modeling.

Outside of Rice, Dee regularly leads environmental science programming for the Girl Scouts of the USA, work for which she was recently honored with the Global Leadership Award by the Girl Scouts of New England. She is a regular contributor to media coverage on climate change with NPR, AccuWeather, and the Houston Chronicle. Dee loves working with Rice undergraduates to find solutions to environmental problems.

Tyler Link, GISP
Geographic Information Specialist III, Texas Department of State Health Services

Tyler Link has more than 10 years of professional geographical information system (GIS) experience across multiple disciplines — from environmental, to education and public health. Link’s time on the Center for Health Statistics’s GIS team at the Texas Department of State Health Services has focused on developing GIS web applications that help programs increase public access to health resources from a Naloxone Finder with our partnership with Texas Overdose to Action, and another partnership with the injury prevention team to create the safe riders and the child fatality review team to name a few. One core aspect of his role is the geocoding of all the public health records within the state. This is the core basis of how spatial analysis can start.

Edward J. Septimus, MD
Senior Lecturer/Population Medicine, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare

Ed Septimus, MD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a professor at Texas A&M University College of Medicine, and an adjunct professor of medicine at Houston Methodist Research Institute. Septimus is board certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases. He has served as vice president of research and infectious diseases at HCA Healthcare until 2018; on the board of directors of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA); on the IDSA Antimicrobial Resistance Committee; the SHEA Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee; and the IDSA Quality Measurement Committee. Septimus is now on the IDSA Sepsis Advisory Panel. He was chair of the Healthcare Safety Advisory Committee for the Texas Department of State Health Services from 2018 – 2021. He was the first recipient of the IDSA Watanakunakorn Clinician Award. He was on the Expert Panel in 2014 and 2022 – 2023 for the SHEA Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals. He co-chaired the NQF Patient Safety Steering Committee until the end of 2021 and was vice chair of the NQF/Batelle Consensus Standards Approval Committee. He was on the Expert Panel for the NQF Hospital-Onset Bacteremia and Fungemia Playbook. He has received multiple teacher awards and has published more than 140 articles and chapters.

Stephen White, PhD, MLS (ASCP) CM
Epidemiologist IV, High Consequence Infectious Diseases Team Lead, Texas Department of State Health Services

Stephen White, PhD, MLS (ASCP) CM, currently serves as the epidemiologist IV team lead for high consequence infectious diseases and supervisor of the invasive and respiratory infectious diseases team with the Emerging and Acute Infectious Disease Unit at the Texas Department of State Health Services. White earned his bachelor of science in clinical laboratory science and master of science in clinical practice management from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and his doctorate in public health (epidemiology) from Florida International University. Before returning to Texas, White previously worked for the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Public Health Laboratories in Miami for almost 10 years, serving most recently as the laboratory director.

White also previously served as the laboratory's bioterrorism coordinator and virology section supervisor. From 2015 to 2016, he spent approximately 15 months working for the University of Massachusetts Medical School as the laboratory technical manager of its Ebola outbreak response in Liberia, helping coordinate and strengthen public health laboratory resources. White also served as a senior microbiologist for the South Dakota Public Health Laboratory and currently serves as the Association of Public Health Laboratory's chair for the global health committee. In addition to his experience with the Ebola outbreak, White has served in key leadership roles during the Zika pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic, emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) in dairy cattle, the 2022 outbreak of mpox, and the recent outbreak of measles in Texas.

Moderator: Blake Hanson, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health

Blake Hanson, PhD, is an infectious disease epidemiologist and an assistant professor in the Center for Infectious Diseases at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Hanson’s laboratory uses a combination of existing and innovative laboratory techniques, and cutting-edge sequencing and bioinformatics to study infectious disease transmission and colonization, how microbial communities impact the development of disease, and how antimicrobial resistance develops and transmits through society.

Valerie Desrosier
Solution Engineer, Esri

Valerie Desrosier is a solution engineer at Esri with more than a decade of experience applying geospatial technology to global health, development, and environmental challenges. Before joining Esri, Desrosier led geospatial analytics and data integration efforts as the analytics group manager at the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), where she supported emergency response, COVID-19 analytics, and statewide infectious disease surveillance programs. With a background in health systems and geosciences, she now works closely with humanitarian and global health organizations — including the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and others — to integrate GIS into their workflows, enhancing disease surveillance, informing resource allocation, and improving health outcomes worldwide. At Esri, Valerie helps partners harness the power of location intelligence to build more resilient, equitable, and data-driven health systems.

Andrew DiNardo, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Infectious Disease; Global and Immigrant Health, Baylor College of Medicine

Andrew DiNardo, MD, PhD, attended Wayne State University School of Medicine for his doctor of medicine; University of Pennsylvania for his internal medicine residency; and Baylor College of Medicine for his infectious disease fellowship. DiNardo completed a PhD in epigenetics and Tuberculosis endotypes at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. He now co-runs the Ben Taub Tuberculosis clinic in Houston and implements TB immunology and epigenetic studies in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).

Lori Teller, DVM, DABVP
Clinical Professor, Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Lori Teller, DVM, DABVP, is a graduate of Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and a board-certified diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners in Canine and Feline Practice. Teller has worked at Meyerland Animal Clinic for many years as a companion animal veterinarian and is also a clinical professor at the TAMU College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS). She is very passionate about her teaching role in primary care, as well as telemedicine and its utilization in the veterinary field.

Throughout her career, Teller has served on many committees, task forces, and boards, and has won several awards. She was named one of 14 Veterinarians to Watch by Veterinary Practice News and has a monthly radio spot on Houston’s NPR radio station where she highlights the importance of veterinary care and answers the questions of callers. She serves as an educator and mentor to many veterinary students, recent graduates, and young leaders.

Teller is the vice president of the ABVP. Most recently, Teller was named as the chief veterinary officer of GuardianVets, a veterinary teletriage service, where she can promote and support the appropriate use of telehealth and improve access to veterinary care for professionals and animal owners alike.

Outside of the veterinary world, she was a founder of and a board trustee for The Gateway Academy, a high school for students with learning differences and special needs in Houston.

Michael Joseph Tisza, PhD
Assistant Professor, Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine

Michael Joseph Tisza, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, and an affiliate of the Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research. Tisza is deeply interested in how our ability to conduct genomic sequencing on microbes and communities of microbes (metagenomes) has outpaced our ability to understand the meaning of those sequences. He believes that a deep understanding of genomic features and genomes is necessary to delineate the impact of microbes in health and disease. To accomplish this, Tisza believes we need powerful computation tools that generate testable predictions and the ability to test these predictions in the laboratory. Tisza has worked to become a leader in virus discovery, virus metagenomics, and bacterial genomics. His lab develops new sequencing assays; uses virus sequencing data to discover disease associations; tracks pathogenic viruses in municipal wastewater; and generates testable hypotheses from microbial sequencing data.

Moderator: Jennifer Deegan, MPAff
Vice President of Health Policy and Systems Strategy, UTHealth Houston

Jennifer Deegan, MPAff, is vice president of health policy and systems strategy for The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) and part of the strategic leadership team for the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute (TEPHI). Previously, she worked for 15 years with the Texas Legislature in both the House and Senate on health policy and budget. She holds a master's in public affairs from The University of Texas at Austin.

Deegan plays a leadership role in TEPHI's wastewater monitoring program and collaborates extensively with state and local stakeholders as chair of TEPHI's Action Working Group. She is a co-principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health grant focusing on ethical dissemination of community level wastewater findings; co-author on numerous publications related to the use of wastewater surveillance for public health preparedness; and has presented on this topic at conferences across the U.S. and Texas.

Carlos Plasencia, MD
Retired, Former Regional Medical Director 6/5 S, Texas Department of State Health Services

Carlos Plasencia, MD, is a retired regional medical director of the Texas Department of State Health Services Region 6/5South (Southeast Texas). Plasencia began this role after Hurricane Harvey and led efforts to strengthen the region's ability to respond to disasters. These capabilities were tested and bore fruit multiple times during his tenure, with the region displaying agile responses not only to multiple natural disasters but also public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plasencia is also a retired US public health service captain where he served in various assignments, including providing health services in Alaska Native Health and Community Health Centers in Texas; serving as a flight surgeon in the US Coast Guard; and working in policy development under the Assistant Secretary for Health.

Plasencia is a graduate of the University of Colorado School of Medicine where he also obtained a Master of Science in Public Health. He is board certified in family medicine.

Plasencia believes transparency and developing forums for cooperation are key to a strong, resilient public health system. As such, he fostered a collaborative approach in public health to help bring together the skills and talents of all stakeholders. He also stresses the importance of identifying and serving the needs of vulnerable populations, including and especially access to care.

Katherine Wells, DrPH, MPH
Director, Lubbock Public Health

Katherine Wells, DrPH, MPH, is the director of Lubbock Public Health, where she has led a major transformation in expanding the department's size and services — establishing it as a regional leader in public health. She previously worked at the Texas Department of State Health Services, where she developed programs for people living with HIV and managed communicable disease efforts across 45 West Texas counties. Wells is the past president of the Texas Association of City and County Health Officials and currently chairs its Government Affairs Committee. She also serves on the board of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. She holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Texas A&M University. Wells lives in Lubbock with her husband and two daughters.